DELTARUNE Survey: Impressions, Speculation, Etc.
Toby Fox has decided to just spontaneously release what’s being called the first chapter of his Undertale follow-up on Halloween, and the internet… like, duh. C’mon now.
Oh, yes.
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Everyone on the right page? I 100% assume you at least played the game front to back. I went out of my way to not hurt things, since I’m not the sort to chain play a game to dig into tiny or even substantial variants. And I suspect the game is designed around the assumption you play it like Undertale.
Now, because Undertale has had such a huge impact on the net, and because of its reputation as an auteur project, people are going to start picking this apart for hidden meaning about an eventual full game of DELTARUNE almost immediately. Which is cool, but not really the content I crave. And indeed I suspect nobody else is going to make the content I crave, so I’ll just have to generate it.
We’ll be going through three basic mini-analyses, as appropriate for a 2–3 hour game. Since we can’t say for sure, at this point, what form DELTARUNE will ultimately take, and due to the nature of the chapter we have, we’ll take a moment to look at the arc story presented here. Then we’ll spend a little time on the game as a follow-up to Undertale, and finish off with some inklings I had about what the game’s going for thematically and its use of this demo (?) to pull that off.
The game starts with a simple but portentous character creation sequence, which is immediately dashed because this is a world where decisions don’t matter (we’re told). So actually the game starts with a child named Kris, sent off to Undertale High (I’m just gonna try and refrain from fully namedropping all the returning characters, just… understand that yes, everyone is back, with two expected exceptions.) You’re railroaded into pairing off with a delinquent named Susie, and a trip to the supply closet drops you into a realm dubbed The Dark. You’re shortly joined by a native named Ralsei, who regales you with a tale of the balance of darkness and light and dubs the three of you a trio of legendary heroes.
Susie pretty much immediately tells you to piss off, bully that she is, and when you’re troubled by a boy named Lancer she ultimately decides fuck it, she’ll be a bad guy and join forces with him. Their growing bond, and your party’s growing realization that this is working and they need to encourage it, form the core of the game and… it’s cute? I feel like I’m watching a stereotypical jRPG plot in fast forward in a lot of ways, except DELTARUNE is amazing at really selling those well-trod moments. When Susie threatens someone, you believe she’ll goddamned follow through. She never does! But somehow I was on edge every time. Ultimately you get Lancer to come around, and faced with the realization she’s developed a genuine friendship Susie follows suit. Lancer’s father, the King, still insists that you’re dangerous and must be destroyed, but in the end he is deposed as your kindness has reminded all his citizens of better times.
As a self-contained story this is about as good as we can ask for. Susie’s arc hits a lot of the notes returning players would expect, and riff nicely on a lot of trends in video games and anime that’ve become a bit common in the last couple years (or so it feels like). Ralsei is a delightful bundle of fluff, to a degree that honestly I expected him betraying you to be the big twist (because let’s be real: there was always going to be a major twist.) Kris… does not get to make meaningful choices. So hey, nothing new there until there is.
The Undertale-ness of it all is omnipresent, with silly monster personalities and puzzles that deliberately don’t try and chipping away at people’s walls, but comes through strongest in the strangest places. After the main adventure you can talk to Toriel about Asriel, and she relates the story of his “green dinosaur from Super Smashy Bros.” themed birthday. Wherein Asgore painted dozens of eggs with Yoshi dots, delighting the child… then caused him to cry for hours the next morning when he made them for breakfast. This particular line was so strongly the precise feel and comforting, silly wrongheadedness that is exactly what made Undertale something that spoke directly to the human soul.
So between that and the overt fanservice, a returning player from Undertale will be right at home. Which means of course there’s going to be something utterly horrible under the surface. A big part of the way Undertale engages with the player emotionally is presenting itself as a jRPG but actively chastising the player for responding to it like an RPG (ie level grinding) instead of noticing what the game is actually telling you narratively (ie developing empathetic resonse). So DELTARUNE is presenting itself in this demo as Undertale 2, and even if it weren’t people would’ve assumed it was no matter what Toby Fox actually released. So when the game ends with Kris ripping out their own soul, throwing it in a rusty bird cage, and pulling out a knife in the pose associated with the fallen child of Undertale, well, if they weren’t going to have a horrible bloody betrayal from Ralsei that was the next logical option.
But I wonder.
Now paired with the opening which puts the player in mind of being forced to participate in the inevitable, which they may well have put out of mind after getting caught up in Susie’s story for the bulk of the game, this being a prequel of some kind seems plausible. Sure, all the fine details don’t line up at all with what was presented in Undertale, but maybe that just means it’s a weird prequel-in-spirit but also all the old characters are back because meta!
But nah. The scenario implied in this ending smacks of darkness for darkness’ sake, and honestly that’s just not even an interesting direction to twist up a player’s expectations. Like what, this is going to force you to play it like a jRPG except all the hordes you kill are aware and beg for their lives? That game basically already exists, it’s called Lisa.
So nah, I think this is all a fake out. Either the entire ‘demo’ is really more of a playable teaser whose content isn’t actually going to be terribly relevant to the actual final game, or something more interesting is going on here.
In that light, let’s talk about Dragon Quest for a minute.
Undertale’s visual presentation is very similar to the original NES Dragon Quest. In part of course this is because Undertale’s single biggest influence is Earthbound, and Earthbound’s NES predecessor was also basically Dragon Quest in look and feel. But Undertale definitely draws some elements from the original Dragon Quest in its own right. Dragon Quest III reveals that the realm of the original game is, in fact, an underground magical kingdom, and considering DQIII itself uses the actual globe as the basis for its map, there’s definitely a parallel between Alefgard and the Underground. One of the distinguishing features of DQ1 however is being a solo adventure, a trait almost never seen in a turn-based jRPG. It’s not much of a stretch to say that DQ1 isn’t strictly the first jRPG because of this in fact. However, that’s basically because Dragon Quest II immediately developed the addition of recruiting party members. It’s really this change, of collecting and commanding multiple heroes with diverse abilities and temperaments that created the original distinctions between the jRPG and the games like Ultima and Wizardry and inspired them. Similarly DELTARUNE is setting itself up as not a twist on Undertale but adding an entire other dimension. Heck, for starters the core gameplay change is, in fact, adding multiple party members! So our task is pondering what that dimension might be narratively.
My first thought is the presentation of going into the Dark with Undertale High as a sort of hub world is the best line of attack. Now Chapter 1 here could be a misdirect, a playable teaser that hints at the tone or concept of DELTARUNE without actually being a part of it narratively. But even in that case, the clear divide between the main world and the realm of the Dark, and that portion of the game having a complete narrative, is probably the most important aspect. But the more I think about it, the more I don’t think this is accidental or a tactic to divert players.
My bold prediction is this: DELTARUNE will not be a continuous narrative. Each portion will be akin to Dragon Quest, with modular, fairy tale stories, bridged by hub worlds with sudden, jarring, and thematically inappropriate endings. Narratively this will manifest as basically exploring various alternate universes based on Undertale. The High School AU, the Ninja Village AU, the Victorian Gentlemen AU, who the heck knows.
But more interesting is how this will take form thematically. Because where Undertale was a game about the nature of video games and how players are encouraged to do violence in them without thought to the consequences or motivations to do so, the kinda sorta but not really twist at the end of this puts me in mind of endless fan theories. Rather than appreciate Undertale for its themes and embracing the empathy at its core, many deliberately sought to take the darkest actions in order to dig up the lore beyond lore and twist a deeply kind and caring game into something monstrous.
In other words, DELTARUNE will be a game about fandom, and its insistence on seeing or finding darkness in the face of empathy, hope, and determination. This survey edition has a complete narrative, one that ties in a substantial conflict Kris has in the real world, and while there are subtle hints of something else driving the King’s actions (repeated mentions of a Knight by him and the bonus boss), even those have no meaningful link to Kris’ sudden turn in the ending. And even treating it as a prequel or sequel or anything really to Undertale doesn’t substantially add anything. The details are entirely wrong for either. But a series of alternate universes, continually corrupted by the driving need for some deeper narrative explanation for thematic truths? Aye, that sounds like exactly the sort of thing what I just played could be chapter 1 to.
I can’t prove that beyond the surface impressions I got here of course. But I think if I end up being right? The whole internet collectively owes me a coke. And really I don’t think I have anything else to add. It’s a fun experience, and it’s been a minute since I got to really let fly with wild speculation, and right, wrong, or other I have a hunch I’ll at least be a bit different.
